After fixing management issues, Excellon made a strong close to the year, passing 16,500 tonnes of ore through the Platosa mill. "We are still trying to recover from the question mark caused by our third quarter as it surprised the market, when the reality is that you have to execute," he said.
With production at Platosa, which has been Mexico's highest-grade silver mine since production commenced in 2005, back on track, Excellon is aiming to increase from 200 tonnes a day to 250tpd and then onto 300tpd," he said.
Resource drilling is a big part of that plan and so an interception such as 5.0m grading 968 grams per tonne silver, 9.4% lead, 20.1% zinc and 0.28g/t gold or 2,356g/t silver equivalent it has just reported, one of its highest intercepts to date, that expands the NE-1S Manto eastward, identifying an open zone of mineralisation bodes well.
"We have identified an open zone to continue expanding the mineralised footprint to the east with our ongoing drilling program during 2019," stated SVP geology Ben Pullinger in the news release.
To assist the exploration effort, the company is using techniques that are not typical in the Mexican silver industry.
"Geochem techniques such as gravity and IP [induced polarisation] are very effective," said Cahill.
"We have used these techniques to our advantage and identified two new veins. However, auger drilling is not typically used in Mexico but has been effective in identifying geochemical anomalies in places like Africa.
"Given Ben's success at Roxgold, we recently imported an auger rig that can bore down 30m. We are using hyperspectral imaging and the auger rig to drill out targets."
